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The number of giant pandas in captivity across China has risen to 183, an increase of 22 over the national survey result announced three and a half years ago, said Zhao Xuemin, deputy director of the State Forestry Administration.

The year 2005 alone saw the births of 18 panda cubs, Zhao said at a seminar on the protection of pandas at Qinling Mountain Range held in Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province.

The official attributed the rapid increase of pandas to breakthroughs in artificial reproduction of this rare species.

Chinese researchers have solved some key issues concerning panda propagation, such as difficulty in oestrum and mating of giant pandas.

China launched a special project for the protection of giant pandas and their natural habitats in the early 1990s. So far four centers or bases for panda propagation have been set up, with encouraging results in panda protection.

At the well-known China Giant Panda Protection Center at Wolong, southwest China's Sichuan Province, for instance, researchers have achieved a 100 percent survival rate for panda cubs in six straight years.

To date, China has built 55 nature reserves, plus a dozen protective corridors connecting the nature reserves, for giant pandas, with the area of natural habitats for giant pandas enlarged from 1.4 million hectares in the early 1990s to 2.3 million hectares.

"The efforts have brought more than 70 percent of the giant panda species living in the wild under effective protection," said Zhao.

The previous national survey on giant pandas, carried out at the end of 2002, showed the number of pandas in pens totaled 161. Twenty-two panda cubs were born and raised in less than four years.

Giant pandas, said to have been around when dinosaurs roamed the earth, are cited as a "national treasure" of China. Altogether 1,596 giant pandas now live in the world, mostly in high mountains of China's western provinces of Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu.

The Chinese forestry official said more pandas raised in captivity would be released into nature to increase giant panda species living in the wild in the future.

Zhao declared a success to the releasing into nature of Xiangxiang, a five-year-old human-raised giant panda which was set free from Wolong on April 28.

He said feedback information from Xiangxiang, fitted with a collar containing a satellite positioning device and a wireless tracking monitor, proves the animal has started to contact with other pandas living in the wild.

(Xinhua News Agency June 12, 2006)